


An Angel Without a Heaven

by JustMaggie



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: A pile of feels, A small amount of fluff, Canon-Typical Violence, Cliffhangers, Depression, Drug Use, Heavy Angst, Multi, Revenge, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 18:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16645508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustMaggie/pseuds/JustMaggie
Summary: Angel, daughter of Handsome Jack, is still alive yet abandoned.Escape and freedom is all she ever wanted, and she has the chance to reach out and grab it, if she will.Getting into a city you aren't allowed in is hard enough, getting into a flying city is even worse.





	1. Where Angels feared to tread

**Author's Note:**

> New and improved fic featuring my favorite smol siren; Angel.  
> I can assure you new readers that this will be a looong story because I'm so invested this one. 
> 
> Enjoy and don't forget that kudos and comments keep an author motivated and happy!

Pain; physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury. Synonyms: agony, torture, misery.

That was all she felt when her eyes eased opened to grab a brief look at the dark chamber around her, before wrenching shut to attempt to clear the pain searing through her mind. Angel-- alone and curled into a ball on the dark floor, lit only by the faintly glowing pools of liquid Eridium that were covered with simmering crystals; like thin, fragile ice that froze only the top layer of water at the beginning of winter.  
Angel’s thin, pale hands reached out, looking for anyone that could help her, but there was no one there. She couldn’t access any technology; the strain sent her into another wave of burning pain that felt like a thousand red-hot pokers being pushed into her head. There was one thing that she knew could ease this agony, and it lay crystalizing in pools on the ground. Her usually blue eyes were bloodshot and sore. It didn’t make it better that tears were blurring what vision she could manage, but she could see the Eridium, and that was all that mattered to her.  
Standing was out of the question; Angel’s legs were too weak to hold even her frail frame, but something almost instinctual drove the young Siren to get to the alien mineral on the ground. She felt drowsy, like waking up from a nap in the middle of the day, yet she carried on.

With great effort, she propped herself up on her hands and began to crawl towards the solidifying pool of Eridium a couple feet away from where she had lay.  
The crawl wasn’t as painful as Angel previously thought, it was working through the stiffness of her joints that was the hardest part. 

“Great, I’m turning into an old man,” she thought jokingly, the tiniest smile drawing up the edge of her lips.  
The violet crystal had reached all the way to the bottom of the liquid by the time Angel reached the edge of the shallow puddle on the ground and she was filled with panic when she saw. 

“No… this… this can’t be happening.” She rasped, her voice coarse and barely audible from disuse. The Siren’s short nails scraped into the mineral, making a shrill, sharp sound and carving a thin, white line in the Eridium. Losing patience, Angel balled her hands into fists and started pounding on the crystalline surface like an angry child, bruising the bottom of her pale hands and forcing minuscule shards of the Eridium into her skin. 

Exhausted, Angel surrendered that she would die there, and rolled onto her back to study the flickering white tattoos on her arm. In a flash, she remembered what she was, a Siren. At that moment, it was excruciating to use any of her supernatural powers to aid her, but the thought of the alien mineral drove Angel on. The girl placed her hand slowly onto the cool crystal and her tattoos lit up the room, casting white shapes onto the walls as her mind wandered over the familiar substance. She took a deep breath and fought through the stinging sensation plaguing her head. 

A few seconds passed to no progress in liquifying the Eridium, the thought of ultimate doom covered her like a dark cloud until the mineral began to sink beneath Angels’ fingers and become a liquid once again.  
The Eridium, shimmering and cold, was somehow comforting to the young Siren as she cupped a small amount in her hands and drank. For the first time in hours she felt like she could breathe, and brought another small handful to her lips, restoring some colour to her face.  
The drowsiness ebbed off, as did some of the pain. A portion remained in the back of her mind though, like a splinter stuck in your hand. Angel ignored it and knew she couldn’t take being in this bunker one second longer.

Stretching out her legs, she took the steps to stand up and slowly rose to her feet. Two seconds after she victoriously stood up to her full height, Angel’s knees gave out and she dropped back to the floor. Drinking the Eridium wouldn’t get enough into her bloodstream as quick as she needed it to, but the broken injectors ten feet away from her would. 

Giving up on walking, Angel army crawled over to the tens of tubes secured together with metal buckles but punctured by lots of bullet holes. Something irritating buzzed around her mind – curiosity; as the fate of the Vault Hunters was unclear to her, she wanted to know about it, though she needed to focus on the task in front of her. At the end of the broken tubes were fifty micro-needles, razor sharp and painful. Angel always had a fear of needles, ever since she was a child. At the doctor’s office back on Tantalus, she would hide behind her mother and cry for an alternative. That, of course, was when her mother was still living.  
Angel examined one of the tiny medical tools attached to a clear acrylic tube and pulled on it. Luckily, a hole was already shot through the middle, and the rest was degrading from exposure to the Eridium anyway. So now she had a foot of tubing and a needle. Her fingers drummed on the glass of the injector as she thought over how she was going to do this. To the heart? No, she never had good aim with anything especially not when it came to life or death stuff. The shoulder was too far to reach around at, so the crease of the elbow it would have to be.  
The syringe in hand, Angel crawled back over to the puddle. She was exhausted, even with the supplemental Eridium, the excessive movement had completely drained her of energy. The Eridium began to crystalize again, and she knew that her mind couldn’t take even the tiniest of phaseblasts to melt it back, she had to move. Now. 

With the needled straw dragging behind her, Angel made her way back to the Eridium pile and sat beside it, jet black hair obscuring her vision. She brushed it away from her face and tucked it behind her ear while she trailed the tube through the purple liquid to fill it up. A couple tiny beads of Eridium leaked through cracks in the makeshift syringe, yet she continued until the clear acrylic was glowing violet and sealed it off the best she could.

Her small hand held the needle, a cold thing that she didn’t want anything to do with; but it was this, or die alone, like everyone who knew of her believed she had. Angel had written with her left hand before, and preferred it to her right, though it proved a hinderance in school when she had to wear gloves to hide her unusual secret. The veins in her right arm were nearly invisible as she looked for the telltale blue line, though they had become more purple then blue over the years on Eridium. Angel unhooked one of the black tubes from her side and tied it around what little bicep she had until it became uncomfortable. Finally, a line of indigo, no more then a couple centimeters long, but all she needed. The young Siren’s hands were shaking, and a cloud seemed to leave her mind foggy and light, despite her attempts to clear it. The thin metal tube was close to her arm, though she was hesitant, not wanting to stab it into her arm like a knife. 

Out of nowhere, a light came on. Followed by another, and another. The sudden shift in shadow made Angel jump and hiss as she sent the needle straight into the crease of her elbow; she didn’t have time to complain about it though, as the lights were on, and that meant someone was on the other end, controlling them. Angel squeezed the sealed tube of Eridium into her arm and pulled the needle out with a painful tug. A small bead of odd-coloured blood pooled at the spot where she had accidentally stabbed herself, she let it bleed and got to her feet, the fogginess in her mind gone for now.  
“If I’m well enough to stand, I can certainly walk.” Angel thought and opened the door to the other side of the chamber. Finally, she limped out, still weak and frail from the years of being totally static.  
The hallway was familiar, yet not. The Siren recalled being led to the control core where she’d spent the last six years, before that, it was routine trips from Tantalus to Pandora and back. That was before the “accident” that caused her to be locked up. If she could break one of the giant glass tubes still churning Eridium… a sound of metal scraping metal jarred her attention towards the descending elevator. Running as fast as she could, Angel reached the far end of the hallway and hid behind a standard yellow and grey Hyperion box, waiting for whoever, or whatever to go away. Yet the elevator stopped a couple meters up.  
The sound of hurried footsteps and more clanging was heard exiting into some other room, the security base of operations, as she recalled. Unfortunately, the bunker was built into a cliff, so the walls were way too thick to hear any voices, unless they were really yelling. The elevator shaft however, was a different story. Two loader bots, Angel concluded, defending one passenger. The passenger remained a mystery, as whoever it was boarded the ascension device and left, leaving Angel free to follow upwards. 

Her nearly white hand slammed down on the button when the silver and mustard yellow doors were visible. Inside was a small fast-travel station, completely smashed and full of bullet holes. Angel reached out to touch the machine before retracting her hand when she saw the spray of blood on the metal. Still drying and bright crimson, on the other end of the room were a shattered glass desk and a row of computer monitors, all black or buzzing with grey static. Angel’s eyes widened at the sight of the dead body on the floor, unnoticed until she nearly tripped over it. A gruesome scene it was, head half caved in, blood oozing out his mouth, and a large piece of the glass desk imbedded in his neck. The girl dry-heaved into the corner a couple times until her stomach surrendered and stopped trying to reject the no food she had eaten.  
A black and white striped travel mug was all that remained on the shattered desk. Thinking quickly, Angel reached over the deceased body and grabbed it; a shake revealed it to be about half full of some liquid, either water or some other drink. The Siren opened the lid and poured out the clear brown liquid that carried a sharp odor similar to rubbing alcohol, onto the cadaver. A moment later, Angel was back down at the Eridium tube thinking about how she would get the violet mineral from the chamber and into the mug.  
Located at the end of the hall was a control panel with a clear glass covering to keep it away from unauthorized hands. Red and white buttons were arrayed in rows of three with small black lettering telling what each controlled. 

“Main flow, electric, stabilizers. There’s less of a science to me then I thought if three buttons control everything.” Angel whispered to herself, almost as if she believed someone was watching and listening in on what she was saying. It was out of principal, as someone had been listening in on what she was saying for the last half dozen years. She hovered her hand over the button that read main flow and pressed down on it; somewhere in the base a loud alarm blared twice. The flow of Eridium to the control core slowed down but didn’t stop until about a minute after.  
Angel walked up to the glass tube, Eridium had pooled at the bottom and lay still, bubbling slightly as oxygen rose to the surface in clear shiny spheres. With a thunk, the glass reverberated off Angel’s elbow strike, sending shockwaves up her right arm and a dark blue spot where the skin had started to bruise. 

“Damn, I mean, darn.” Angel censored herself despite not needing to. She knew that glass wouldn’t break by just hitting it with her elbow, but possibly a crowbar or something like it, could collapse the tube and expose the precious liquid mineral inside. The young siren placed the cup down on the metal floor and walked over to the Hyperion supply boxes near the elevator. Searching through the first one yielded no results except for a couple separate boxes of Eridium in thin cylinders, she studied one of the cylindrical bars before continuing with her search. Another box contained loader parts, a leg, a dark blue-grey and teal arm submachine gun attachment, and a dozen “eyes.” Although she absolutely did not know how to use it, Angel picked up the gun attachment and two boxes of ammunition at the bottom of the box. As she was loading the Hyperion gun, a thought came to her mind; “What if I shoot the glass down?” The idea wasn’t totally radical, and the gun was simple to understand. Safety came off before you fired, the ammo went in via a magazine in the handle, and the trigger obviously released a bullet. 

The plexiglass was at point-blank range of the gun and Angel sent two or three rounds of bullets into the clear glass before it splintered and fell to the floor with a sound like high-pitched bells; a pretty sound for a not so pretty situation.  
Angel let the gun fall to her side and reached for the mug, diving it into the liquid and lifting it back up. It then occurred to her; how would she carry this across Pandora without spilling it over? It was, after all, just a coffee cup. 

“Whatever,” she thought, “it will have to do for now.”

Thankfully, Angel found a gun strap in one of the boxes she’d opened earlier and swung the blue and silver thing over her back to continue what she was after.

Freedom. Escape.


	2. Freedom comes at a price

Angel had to find something other than a coffee cup to transport her life source across Pandora; her destination was Sanctuary, home of the Crimson Raiders. Unfortunately, that city was in the air. High in the air; so high that she couldn’t just grab a ladder and climb up. She’d have to get out of this mountain first, and she couldn’t do that without a reasonable thing to carry Eridium in that wouldn’t dissolve.

Angel returned to her chamber—now dark after whoever it was that came, left. The needled tube still sat next to the crystallized pool of Eridium. As much as she hated needles, if she crashed again, she needed to be able to take care of herself. The thought of the man she once called “dad” began to haunt her brain, yet she could not dwell on ideas of revenge at the moment. Sure, she was a Siren, but not as powerful as Maya or Lilith…yet.

With the tube dangling from her right hand, the gun on her back, and the cup in her left, she ascended to the security room again to look around for something else to carry the violet liquid in. The room smelt of death, as the body seemed to have attracted all the flies in the vicinity. Angel forced the bile back down her throat and stepped over the buzzing body. Her discovery was an adjacent bathroom with latex gloves, high quality painkillers, vitamins, a better needle; which she gladly exchanged for the tubed one in her hand, and a pile of I.V. bags. “Oh, perfect.” She said, a little louder this time. The bag could hold much more then the cup and could even be attached to the needle for easy injections when she needed them. If only she could get over her fear of needles, that’d be good.

Angel assumed the medical supplies were for absolute emergencies; if the power was out and the flow was cut. Two bags were taken down to the broken tube and filled up with Eridium, one of which attached to the new needle, and the other was looped through one of the black tubes on her sides. Her focus trailed to her feet as she wore no shoes, only some rather warm socks for six years while she floated in suspended animation. Angel knew the Highlands around the Bunker from maps and satellite imaging, and her feet wouldn’t last the walk through Thousand Cuts, let alone half of Pandora. The thought brought on another wave of headaches, so she dispelled it and continued looking around for supplies. On the ground was a Hyperion gear chip, originally belonging to the dead employee on the floor with his skull smashed in. Without hesitation, Angel picked it up and wiped off the dried blood on her skirt, if you could even call it that. The chip fit over her left ear, so it was obscured from view; buried in her black hair.

The young Siren turned to the door and gazed up the elevator shaft, a pale gold light filtering through the glass at the peak. This was it, her escape, her way out. All she had to do was push the green button on the opposite side of the ascending device. Angel took a deep breath and pressed down on the cold plastic. She jumped as the elevator clanked and jolted upwards. Angel picked at her thumb; a nervous habit when she couldn’t find anything to do with her hands. The light became brighter as the elevator reached the top of the shaft, becoming blinding once it had finished it’s ascent.

Angel breathed in a new breath of impossibly sweet air, so liberating she felt like every inhale was a step away from the torture of the past years, every worry she had at that moment vanished as she climbed up to the glass balcony to see the most beautiful sunrise in her life. Navy and grey skies clashed with vibrant oranges and reds brought by the rising sun, casting a gold glow over the mountains and chasing the cold from the air. Her destination was a black silhouette against the violent colours in the background. Sanctuary, seemingly unphased by any insanity on the surface of Pandora, hovered above the tall mountains. Angel leaned on the edge of the railing, watching the sun creep over the horizon peacefully, embracing her new freedom, when a sonic boom made her nearly jump out of her skin. She watched the fireball break through the atmosphere and disappear behind the mountains, followed by another, and about eight more; moonshots, carrying robots probably. They were a painful reminder of who held the true power over the border planet she now called “home,” Hyperion. She’d always hated yellow anyway, well, not always.

Leaving the sunrise behind, Angel explored the top of where she had been kept prisoner. The BNK-3R was actually deactivated, that surprised her. “You guys must have a lot of guns.” She mused, trailing her fingers over the thousands of bullet holes. Some, when she tried to pry the round out of the metal, shocked or stung her hand; elemental ammo, she guessed. A couple stray bills lay askew under the broken robot, which she picked up and downloaded into her gear chip. The girl placed her tattooed hand on the oil-covered metal and explored the depths of code within the Bunker; complex and broken, they were, nothing of remote use to her situation. Until a part of the working code set off a response through the bot.

 **“PERSON HAS ENTERED THE BASE > IDENTIFY”** Angel shut down the command and pulled her mind out of the code. Someone was here, again. A nonchalant worker climbed up the steps, not paying any attention to the scared-looking girl on the balcony. He walked over to the entrance of the control core and pulled a roll of yellow caution tape from a backpack; starting to weave it over the door. Angel crept down the steps to have a look at the Hyperion worker who yawned and took a sip from a travel mug. The young Siren missed a step, yelping as she struggled to regain her footing.

“Who’re you?” The worker asked, leaning on the wall. Angel seized, forgetting how to interact with another human being face-to-face.

“Engineer.” She blurted out in her soft voice.

“Huh, didn’t know Handsome Jack was hiring engineers so young now.”

“Yeah, Vault stuff.” Angel replied, shuffling around the relaxed worker who took another sip from his travel mug.

“Wait.” She stopped moving, crossing her arms behind her back. “Your arm, lemme see it. I wanna know if I’m crazy or gonna be crazy rich.” He got off the wall and extended his arm, beckoning Angel closer. All this while, she had unhooked the SMG from her back and moved it to her hand. “Come on, if you are a Siren, I’m sure you would’ve melted my brain already. I just want to know whether or not I drank too much last shift.”

In a quick movement, Angel aimed the gun at his chest and fired ten shots onto his sternum, much to his shock and his death. He fell to his knees and then face-down onto the ground, blood seeping from his body. The Siren’s breaths were shallow as she hadn’t voluntarily killed someone before; she did not like it at all. Some, like Nisha, said that killing someone was the best feeling you could have. Angel couldn’t understand her logic behind it; how could you feel happy after destroying someone’s life? Possibly other’s as well? She smashed the ECHOcomm that’d fallen off the worker’s belt and took his backpack from his corpse.

Inside was a paper bagged lunch consisting of what looked to be some kind of wrap and a whole drakefruit, a pack of matches, and a satellite phone. Angel looked through the phone for any connections to Sanctuary, yet only found ones to Helios. Angel threw that phone off the side of the cliff as hard as she could and packed up the bag with her own stuff. She also grabbed the Hyperion all-weather jacket that had belonged to the worker and wrapped it around her waist. Who knows? The environment of Pandora can be brutal and unexpected, blazing hot to freezing cold. You’d have to be insane to live out here, and maybe everyone on this planet was insane, that was alright. Insane, she could deal with. She had dealt with it for six years.

Angel gazed up at Helios, wondering if someone was staring back at her. No, no one was watching for her now, they all believed she was dead. Her father, the Vault Hunters, everyone. She was alone for now, alone in the vast desert of Pandora surrounded by psychos and murderers.

As she walked down the steps with her new gun in front of her, a headache almost sent her sprawling down the next flight. This one was nasty, shooting pain was sent through her head like a swarm of angry wasps, she plastered her hand to her forehead in an attempt to clear the ache, but after a few seconds it subsided. “Huh. Guess I shouldn’t go code diving for a while.” She said to herself. Near the bottom of where the Hyperion metal met natural flooring was a fast-travel station; broken and only able to teleport one way. That didn’t matter though, as Angel only knew the passwords to Helios and any tripping of the network would instantly give up her existence. She closed the screen of the station and pushed through the doors at the end of the line. On the other side were more spiral stairs doing down to another set of large, metal doors that she assumed led to the control core loading docks where Eridium and other necessary items were deposited and sent to her chambers. Angel’s memories of the fight to steal the Vault Key were hazy and pale, yet they only brought more discomfort to her mind. Like she needed any more of that right now.

The climb down the chrome staircase was nearly torture on her barely-used legs. Many a time she had to stop and lean on the side or even sit down to catch her breath, yet even when a single movement felt like fire searing her muscles, she persevered; knowing that nothing good was ever completed without sacrifice or hard work. The same could even be said for Handsome Jack, though Angel didn’t think that was a supreme example of where hard work can get you. After what seemed like hours, the Siren made it down the staircase of hell and pushed open the doors to the loading docks.

There seemed to be no people between her and getting out of this Bunker, so she walked leisurely until the hiss of a pressurized door grabbed her attention. The small Siren dove behind a nearby weapon locker and prayed it wasn’t another robot. Angel’s worst fears were realized when a WAR loader stepped out. She knew the dangers of those things, she had watched as only two of them nearly wiped the floors with the Vault Hunters and almost killed Maya. Angel also helped her father design them, and every loader, no matter the type, had either video or audio recording devices built into their system. This one had both. Either she takes it out before it saw or heard her, or she make a run for no-man’s land and hope she didn’t get killed…or worse, had video of her alive sent to Hyperion.

“These things are slow and stupid, I could out-maneuver it any day.” She thought whilst hiding behind a crate. A small voice nagged in the back of her head saying _“You idiot, a single photo of any actual Siren will be instantly sent to Handsome Jack. You’ll never be able to get Hyperion off your tail.”_ Yet the girl was as stubborn as her father and shook her head to clear the annoying voice and took off at a sprint. Within seconds she struggled to catch her breath and, in her dizzy state, tripped over the foot of the loader, landing on her chest and knocking the wind out of her. Blood pounding in her earsand breath quick and heavy on her compressed lungs, she flipped over onto her back, the pack propping her up to look directly into the red eye of the robot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! I made sure this chapter was as long as the last one, hopefully I can maintain this habit.  
> Very excited to write what happens next. *evil laughter*
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Bandits. What did you expect?

The WAR loader stared down at her, making a couple beeps and clicks before raising Angel off the ground with it’s foot, causing her to roll off the metal and onto the dirt.

The small siren scrambled to her feet, clawing for grip on the asphalt and moss.

As she ran, she could hear the loader’s heavy cannons powering up; if a single bullet hit her, it wouldn’t matter that she got a couple hundred yards out of the Control core, or that she spent all that energy fighting for life. Oh the damage a single bullet could do. Angel wouldn’t let herself die over her own stubbornness, no. She was getting to Sanctuary if it was the last thing she ever did. A stone wall provided her with perfect cover from the expected barrage of incendiary rounds, but the firestorm never arrived. Angel peeked out of her hiding spot to see that the eye of the WAR robot had turned yellow; it wasn’t hostile anymore.

**“SIREN IDENTIFIED >>CAPTURE.”**

“That isn’t good.”

The loader began to approach the young Siren, yet she was faster and took off at as fast a run as she could without running out of breath. In her rush, Angel got caught up in her own feet and slipped off the higher level, falling with a huff onto a gigantic constructor. She gasped for air, trying to draw it into her irresponsive lungs, to no avail.

Her hands scanned quickly for injuries until she was convinced that she was ok, and lowered herself down off the dead construct. Funny. She had thought that the badass constructors were cancelled after injury to a precious body double and a dozen engineers, but here it was, deactivated and harmless. Unless it somehow toppled over and crushed her. Not wanting that to happen, Angel started walking away briskly. A monotone robotic voice stopped her. The WAR loader, how had she let the thing slip her mind? Fear froze her like a statue as the robot lowered it’s arm cannons to her height.

 **“COME WITH ME NOW.”** It commanded, nudging her shoulder with the massive gun.

Angel stood as still as stone, not wanting to piss it off or risk getting killed, but all it did was attempt to pick her up with no arms. The young Siren took a couple shaky steps towards the open archway leading down the cliffside, the loader followed her with one loud step that shook and cracked the very ground.

“Leave me alone, damn it.” The minor curse put a small grin on Angel’s face, though it dissipated as quickly as it arrived.

**“SUBJECT RESISTING CAPTURE. CALLING REINFORCEMENTS.”**

“NO! no, no, no. Don’t call for help! Please don’t call for help!” She pleaded, putting her hands out as if they would halt the order.

**“REINFORCEMENTS UNAVAILABLE. COME WITH ME”**

The girl rolled her eyes as the thing nudged her arm again like an insistent animal wanting to play. In defiance, she started walking away.

The rough earth she walked on was painful for her feet, as small stones and other sharp objects had cut through the sole of her socks, she ignored it, as the thunderous noise behind reminded Angel that the robot was still there.

 _Perhaps,_ she thought, nearly at the end of the dirt ramp, _a small phaseshift wouldn’t hurt too much, at least enough to wipe the film of me_. Angel put her left hand on the main body of the loader, holding it back and anchoring her toes into the gravel and silt to halt it’s advances.

“Stop moving, jeez!” The whites of her arm lit up as she dove into the depths of hyperphire; Hyperion’s custom code language supposedly developed by Handsome Jack.  
It was labyrinthian and difficult to find files in the mess. A headache bloomed across her temples as she pushed her mind further into the binary maze. Then, there it was, a tiny bundle of numbers and letters telling it what to do if it saw a Siren. She maimed and killed that part, as well as the recording of her, waiting to be sent to Helios. For good measure, she flipped the command that told it to kill any non-Hyperion personnel, so it would only attack Hyperion personnel.

Angel retreated from the complex code and sat down cross-legged on a flat rock off to the side as the bot retreated back up to the bunker, trying to ease away the white-hot burning currently turning her vision spotted and swimming. The world around her turned monotone and grey, black closing in from all sides before she fell back, unconscious.

 

**…**

 

She woke up a few seconds later with a poke at her leg, a skag, dumb thing.  
It had a worn-out collar around it’s neck. Possibly a former pet, gone rogue after it’s owner died

“Huh? Hey! I am not food! Get off me.”

The dog-like creature jumped down from the ledge and joined a band of two others, sniffing and prattling over another deceased engineer.  
As Angel was about to get off from the grassy outcrop of rock where she recently passed out, the maimed legs of the engineer flew towards her, bringing a shower of blood in its wake.  
The girl covered her face with her hands, avoiding the spray and any infections it could bring.

She wiped off the blood from her hands on her skirt and moved to get off the rock. An angry snarl stopped her as the pack snapped their heads around, pawing at the ground with razor-sharp claws.

“Good dogs … stay… I’ll just be up here then.” Angel said, sitting back down and hugging her knees close to her chest. Hours passed, and any time Angel got up to walk towards the exit, the pack would beat her to the punch and threaten her until she returned to her “spot” on the rock.

The once bright cyan skies above Pandora began to fade into a dove grey and eventually dark as a stormy sea. Without thinking, as the sun shrank behind the mountains and the wind blew cold, Angel rocked herself back and forth, calming the anxiousness of being alone and weighing down her eyelids until they shut out her bright blue eyes.

During the night, the party of skags chortled amongst each other and finished up their meal, cracking the bones and fighting for them. Meanwhile, Angel slept smoothly and dreamlessly, a soothing void erasing all torture and stress of the day. Of course, nothing lasts forever.

A loud, brusque shriek jolted her awake. She sat up quickly, only to be stopped by a thick body laying across her legs; a damned skag.

“Hey, can- can you please get off me? I need to go.” Angel looked around for any signs of the rest of the pack, but to no avail.  
She thought her eyes could’ve just missed them, as she was still purblind from the sun.

The skag on her lap just looked up at her with a dopey look on its face, tongue lolling out of the three jaws lined with jagged teeth.  
Cute … to some. Not to whoever was standing a few inches in front of it.

The bones were abandoned, apart from a few rakks and even a couple trash feeders that scattered one Angel moved. As the young siren began to get up, the skag scrambled off and started whining for attention. “What? I don’t have food.” Angel insisted, pulling the bag towards her in a defensive manner, not wanting it to know she did, in fact, have food.

The animal was sniffing and pawing at the brown bag, still whimpering. The girl rolled her eyes and groped for a food item from the bag. A drakefruit.

Of course, she didn’t know what skags ate, but this one seemed to like it well enough.

“Are you going to follow me everywhere?” She asked, standing up.

The dog-like creature sat down on it’s spiked haunches and let out a raspy bark.

“I can’t guarantee we both won’t get killed, but hey, we can try to protect each other, right?” Angel said, moving off the ledge and trying to put on a brave smile.

As she got off the rock, the skag loped a few feet ahead, hopefully, Angel thought, it would stay. Pandora was a big place, and it was difficult making your way around without a friend, even if that friend was a dog with scales and spines. Perhaps, if they didn’t die, Sanctuary would let her keep it.

There were no Hyperion soldiers or bots to stop her as Angel and her skag stepped foot onto the squishy soil of No Man’s land. The siren swung her SMG into her hands, holding it towards the ground as the skag went digging through mounds of dirt and scrap metal around the bare land between the Bunker and Thousand cuts. Angel remembered telling the Vault Hunters all those lies about herself and the Vaults. Silently, she vowed to re-pay them for all their grief. The memories of the Control Core were still foggy, she did remember a lot of yelling and plenty of gunshots. Someone died, she knew that. Hopefully it was Jack, she wished, a truly terrible thought; wishing her father was dead, but it didn’t matter who he was, what he did was evil. If it was someone on their side, from the Vault Hunters or the Crimson Raiders, she didn’t know if she could forgive herself.

The cheerful bark of the Skag distracted her – it found a chicken leg left in a metal chair. She’d made it to her first bandit camp.

“Time to see if they’re as bad as Jack says they are.” She said aloud. The slab town seemed quiet enough, she and her skag kept out of the keen eye of the buzzards circling like vultures overhead. The first psycho she saw didn’t notice her, as it was screaming at some black graffiti on a piece of sheet metal. I mean, it’s not much of a loss to just moonshot the place. Angel thought for a second. No, that was a thought Jack would have. She wasn’t her father, and she’d do anything in her power not to be as corrupted and cruel as he was. The ammo she had was finite, unlike in the control core, she couldn’t access digistruct technology, therefore not being able to just make a new magazine appear out of thin air. And the psycho wasn’t bothering anyone, so she let him do his screaming at writing nonsense. She would soon regret it. Angel jogged through the small portion of Thousand cuts, the exit tunnel in clear view, when she was spotted.

The gruff voice of a marauder stopped her in her tracks for a millisecond, until she recognized the danger surrounding her and bolted for the exit. During her run, the whistle of a buzz-axe caught her attention, even more so as it cut a gash in her calf, spilling deep discoloured blood from the wound. Angel hissed, but carried on, seeing a glimpse of her skag tackle the psycho that threw it.

Barrages of bullets came flying at her as well – she aimed the gun behind her as she ran and held the trigger down and dived into the darkness of the stone tunnel and curled up, hand pressed against the seeping wound to stem most of the flow of blood. The bandits grew tired of shooting after a minute or two and resumed their daily lives.

Angel sat, waiting for the blood to scab over so she could continue on her quest for sanctuary. The skag! How could she have forgotten the skag? Half an hour and she was the cause of yet another death. She curled up in a ball, a stinging lump in the back of her throat beginning to grow. She closed her eyes tightly, wishing that when she opened them again she would be at home, back on Tantalus, just waking up from some horrible nightmare.

A wet lick on her face made her jump.

“Damn skag! I thought you died! Now you made me cry, and, to be honest, I probably need to cry some more, but this leg needs to be patched up and then we can find a way to Sanctuary, all right?” The dog-creature yapped a curt reply, and sat down, scratching it’s head. “We’ll be ok… I hope. Guess hoping is the best we can do out here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, schoolwork piled up over the week and I hit a nasty case of writers block. But I'm back now!  
> There won't be any updates during the holidays, unfortunately, though I might post whatever chapters I've written on Christmas as sort of a gift so you guys have something to read. 
> 
> Next chapter is a Jack perspective up in Helios


	4. Helios

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very very sorry about not updating over Christmas. Family took over the better part of my break and friends the other portion. Anyway, enjoy this slightly shorter chapter!

Handsome Jack was alone in his office. Nisha was dead, had been killed a day before, and his only child the day before that.  
The sting of regret and loss wasn’t new to him, not after his first and second wife. It had just been so long since he’d felt like that.

  
What did it matter? He had Lilith, trapped and charging the Vault key in the middle of a damned volcano filled with creepy-ass statues.  
He pulled up some files regarding the key’s well-being and passed a hand through his imperfect hair. He stared at the pages. Not even at them, through them, his vison unfocused and his mind a thousand miles away.  
A muted knock on the doors snapped Jack out of his gaze.

  
“What?” He yelled.  
The head and shoulders of his assistant, Meg, appeared through the opening.

  
“I just was wondering if you, uh, were still going to that Tediore conference this afternoon, sir? You asked me to book it last week.”  
Handsome Jack got up from his chair and walked down to the metal doors where Meg was cowering.

  
“Do I look like I’m in the mood, Meg. Huh?”

  
“N-no, sir. I just-”

  
“Get out!” Jack interrupted, slamming the door shut. A small squeak issued from the assistant, as she had caught a finger in the door.  
He pushed that thought out of his mind and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from a shelf, along with a squat crystal tumbler. Handsome Jack poured the amber liquid into the cup, wasting not a second to gulp it down.

The picture.

In a blurry haze he had a sudden urge to seek out the photograph from so long In the past. Was it even still there?

  
He swept any useless papers and cash off the desk, searching for that one frame captured years ago. Before Vaults. Before Pandora. He needed to see her again, only once may be enough.  
Finally, there it was. Albeit cracked, but still there.

  
He traced a thumb over the cold metal of the frame, trying to remember what her face looked like the last time he saw his daughter in person. Was it angry, tear-stained…frightened? He did not know.

  
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry damn it. You deserved so much better.” Jack whispered to the photograph.  
He sniffed, not wanting to start crying. That wasn’t “Handsome Jack-ly” of him. It wasn’t even true sadness, there was anger there, too. Anger directed at himself. No, that wasn’t right.  
He was the hero, the hero wasn’t supposed to be hated and feared, especially by themselves. There must be someone else to blame...the Vault Hunters. Yes, that was it. After all, they killed his daughter.  
The picture lay, accidentally pushed to the ground as Jack started forming the foundations of a plan in his head.  
He took another swig of the old alcohol, this time straight from the bottle.

A chuckle at the end of the hall stopped his furious typing.  
“Wow. You’ve really hit a new low, Jack. Even broke open the best whiskey we’ve got.” Timothy said, casually strolling up the carpeted room.

  
“Piss off.” He replied lowly, closing the tabs and looking up at the identical man before him.

  
“What happened?”

  
“None of your business, Timmy. Who sent you? Meg?”

  
“Yeah, she thought you might need to talk to someone.”

  
Jack scoffed, “Talk to someone,” what a load of horseshit. I can talk to myself just fine.”

  
Timothy Lawrence scanned the floor, squatting down to pick up the abandoned frame.  
“Well, you don’t look “just fine.” Who’s this?”

  
The moment Handsome Jack saw his double with the picture, he nearly vaulted over the table, grasping for the photograph as if it were the most precious thing on Earth.

  
“What the hell?!”

  
“GET OUT NOW!”

  
“Jack, calm down-”

  
“THEY KILLED MY BABY GIRL!” Jack roared, choking on the lump in his throat. “Alright? Those Vault Hunters...those bandits, murdered my only child. And I’m going to- oh I’m going to burn them alive in their own homes.”

  
“Should I do something?” Timothy asked, blinking in utter confusion of what just happened.

  
“Yeah. You can go hunt the hunters out in the dust. If they want to know where I’ve got their little Siren, there’s no way they can go anywhere else then Fyrestone. Don’t return until you’ve found them, got it?” Handsome Jack pushed the chair away from the desk and got up, facing Elpis.

  
“Copy that, Handsome Jack, sir.”

  
“Good.” He replied, not looking back at the retreating man.  
A thousand thoughts buzzed around Jack’s mind. Thoughts of murder, torture, the Vault, and if he should kill his favourite body double over a single picture.

Usually, the mask was a comfortable thing, no more a bother then a warm hat. Yet, under the circumstances, it felt unbearable to have on his face. More alike to a bug crawling then a warm hat.  
He unclipped the two metal hinges on his temples, and the one on his chin, letting the synthetic skin face fall to the polished floor. He traced the symbol of the Vault over and over, losing himself in the void of thought.

  
How to best kill those murderous bandit scum? They’d busted his bunker and managed to get through the control core without dying, so they must be extremely well-armed and resilient. Throwing a couple dozen loaders would be a mere annoyance, not a threat. There was one experimental bot that had been trashed due to a cut in materials four years ago. God, he hated Dahl.  
Jack paged the director of R&D.

  
“Hello, sir. What can I do for you today?” The director asked optimistically.

  
“Listen, you remember that giant, yellow, badass robot Hyperion was building when Dahl took over? Yeah, Imma need you to build that for me.” Handsome Jack said casually.

  
“Sir, this is on such short notice, I-”

  
“-Just get it done, idiot! God. You know I don’t give a crap if it’s on short notice, just do it and I won’t kill your family!” With that, Jack hung up on the confused and frightened director.  
“Damn useless employees.” He grumbled, looking as if he had completely moved on from the hysteria of the past hour. What day was it? Friday. That set him in a better mood. The HR department had to be renewed since last month, but he never got down to it.

Before that, though, he needed to look respectable. Messy hair with the sheen of grease and a tear-stained face weren’t what the people of Helios and Pandora needed to see from their “fearless leader.”  
Jack turned away from the window and went to the large bathroom across from where he rarely slept. Was that even him? The mirror never lied, so it must be. At least, in his mind he looked better. Shadows and lines marred the once rather handsome features, not to mention the obvious blue scar and blind eye.  
In a sudden flurry of emotions, the sallow President slammed his fist angrily into the glass, shattering it into the sink and onto the floor.

“God damn it! Why’d you do that?” He yelled at himself. He wanted to hurt someone, or something. Anything to get rid of this pent-up anger.

  
After he cleaned himself up and looked at least slightly presentable, Handsome Jack headed up a few floors to the Human Resources department and was met with a flurry of workers running around, taking calls and typing away at computers. Not a single person noticed him. A rather inconsiderate prick even had the audacity to push him out of the way. He was not having that.

  
“You, in the yellow!” The man kept running, a stack of folders held tightly in his arms. “Stop running you piece of shit!” At that point, the entire office had gone deathly silent. You could hear a pin drop.

  
“Handsome Jack, sir! What can I do for you?” The employee asked, obviously scared.

  
“Are all the rest of your friends in this department arrogant dirtbags that push their superiors around?” He responded with a condescending look on his face.

  
“Uh..”

  
“I’ll take that as a yes. Someone bring that idiot’s work team down to the airlock!”

  
The man and ten other workers started begging for their lives, fully aware of what was about to happen.  
The airlock was hidden behind a couple bookshelves in Jack’s office, so he could sit comfortably, push a button, and have any person he didn’t like or trust flushed away into space.  
As he pushed the button this time though, there was no sadistic euphoria as the HR department was sent to their doom. It seemed as if a part of him was missing, and only one thing could fill that.

Revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Angel finds a name for the skag, and meets the local pandoran wildlife a bit closer
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, leave a kudos if you haven’t already, and comments always make my day.


	5. The Siren and her skag

The insistent skag slept on Angel’s legs through the night, even though she tried to push it off to see to her buzz-axe wound, it wouldn’t budge.

“Come on, get off.” She huffed at the dog-like creature. It stared at her with red eyes and whined. “My leg hurts, skag. Move.” The skag got up and sat down opposite the injured Siren. Angel tore a strip of fabric from the end of her tunic and pressed it to the bleeding cut. It stung like a wasp. The slice wasn’t as deep as she previously thought, which was a relief. The last thing she needed out here was an infection.

“Hey, skag!” She called. “Come on, we need to go. There must be a health machine around here I can hack.” The girl got up, wary of the injury, and limped across the narrow wooden bridge.  
The verdant highlands stretched out before the odd pair. Greens and slate greys. Far across the plains and hills, the silent, sad town of Overlook sat. That, Angel recalled, was the first place she started her rebellion against Handsome Jack; allowing the Vault Hunters access to Sanctuary again. They began walking across the grassy fields towards the possible checkpoint of Overlook.

“You probably need a name, right? I feel like I’m being rude calling you ‘Skag’…what about…hmm. I don’t know. Skaggy? No, that’s stupid. Venus? Cuz your face kinda looks like a Venus flytrap?” The skag looked up at Angel with the same unreadable look that it always wore. “Venus it is, then.” The young Siren concluded, patting the spiny head of the skag. As the two walked out over the rolling green fields, a high pitched whirring caught them off guard.

“Get down!” She hissed at the skag, jumping behind a nearby rock. The surveyor circled around and around the spot they were hiding before speeding off to Thousand cuts.

It took a couple minutes for Angel to catch her breath. If Hyperion was sending drones, they must have some insight onto what really happened at the Bunker. Carefully watching the skies, the Siren and her skag continued on their way.

“I hope there aren’t any threshers around. The signs are everywhere.” Angel noticed, placing a hand on the back of Venus protectively. To the left, across a glass-like lake, lay the shell of Opportunity. Gleaming white and gold.

_Pah_ , Angel thought. She was sick of the blatant arrogance of Hyperion. Too much of it was already invested in Helios.

The eye in the sky.

No one could avoid it, even if you chose to look the other way, it was still there. Watching.

If she squinted, the tops of Overlook’s houses and clock tower were just visible over the stony ridge of a hill.  
A loud growl made the Siren jump. Venus was barking and snarling at a stalker. The thing was nearly double it’s size, and jumped around shrieking and chattering.

“Back off!” Angel warned, keeping her hand on the Skag. The stalker charged forward a few feet until it was in range of Venus’ teeth and claws, then jumped back. The low rumble of the Skag’s growl vibrated through Angel’s hand, as the stalker grew near. It arched it’s spiked tail and whipped a needle at the two.

The Siren ducked, hiding behind the bulk of Venus. With a loud screech, the lone stalker leaped forward… only to be caught in the air by Venus’ jaws. There was carnage and blood after that, as Venus enjoyed her afternoon lunch.

Angel sat down on the ground, looking through the bag that she retrieved from that Hyperion guy. She ate the apple and a granola bar out of the lunch kit. Two minutes later, she felt extremely sick to her stomach.  
Over and over it rolled, until she lost it completely. Maybe it would just be better to stick with the Eridium, the girl thought, trying to stop shivering. Despite the heat, she felt cold and dazed.

Now that she had a moment to think, she wasn’t sure if she’d actually gotten any good sleep the night before. The Eridium had seemed to put her in an “auto-pilot” mode since she escaped. From years of staring at screens, recordings and photographs, the young Siren knew full well what the aftermath of prolonged slag or Eridium use could look like. Perhaps it was different for Sirens, but she didn’t want to run the risk of literally coughing up organs when there wasn’t anyone around to help her. The I.V. It had to be.

There was the sharp prick of the metal, the brief fogginess of the mind, then the sharpened senses. She felt recharged and ready to go; all tremors and coldness gone.  
The odd pair were being watched. They knew. Stalkers, threshers, rakk. They were better at hiding then the Siren and her skag would ever be — blending into their surroundings by either conventional methods or by turning invisible. “Invisible assholes” they sure were, even if the bandit hordes weren’t so great at spelling.

They reached a concrete road. The black pavement burned Angels’ feet when she tried to walk on it, so she stayed to the side. Venus, however, was having the time of her life. Chasing leaves from bushes back and forth across the road like an excited child. The roar of an engine stopped them in their tracks. Angel quickly called the skag over behind a rock and watched the Technical zoom past.

“Was that-? Were those the Vault Hunters?” She asked her skag, looking dumbfounded. “Come on! I could’ve just said hey!” Angel yelled at herself. _But if they weren’t the Vault Hunters, and turned out to be Bandits, you would’ve been glad you hid._ The sensible voice in the back of her head reasoned.

Overlook was now just twenty yards ahead. She could see the shabby sign and the fast-travel station in the centre of town. Beyond that, stretched the Dust. It could take months for her to cross that on foot. That was, if she hadn’t been picked off by other skags or bloodthirsty bandits first. All sorts roamed that desert.

Vault hunters, Hyperion goons, bandits, the occasional Siren.

No, going out there alone would be a death sentence.

There was the Zaford’s bar, just outside the entrance of Overlook. If she could find someone with a useable Echo, getting a line to Sanctuary wouldn’t be a problem. The problem was her attire. Yellow Hyperion Jacket, leggings, no shoes. It wasn’t any safer in there then it was outside. Beside that though, was a Catch-a-ride station.  
She may not know how to drive, but she helped patch the Vault Hunters into Scooter before. She could do it again.

The Hyperion Uplink applied to all the stations on Pandora, so she was already connected. Or so she thought. When Sanctuary had phased to the sky, that link was severed. It wasn’t a big deal though, she would just have to use a connection from Helios. Angel hacked into the Catch-a-ride’s simple block of code and added in the encrypted passwords to connect the system to Hyperion’s. She found the mostly corrupted piece of code hidden away in the program and hooked that up as well. Finishing with the radio code, and she was connected.

“Here goes.” The young Siren pushed a button on the screen to connect to who she assumed would be Scooter, in Sanctuary. Though, if it was Moxxi, Mordecai, or any of the Vault Hunters, she’d be fine with that, too. There was a crackle of static and then a fractured voice she could not identify.

“Hello? Who is this?” Angel asked in a small voice.

“It’s Handsome Jack, what do you want?”

She froze, barely daring to breathe.

“Hello? What. Do. You. Want? Speak up, dum-dum!” Angel, caught off guard by the loud voice of the man who was once her father, started to cry. Not out of missing him, no. They were tears of fear. Of hate. “God, are you crying! Shut up, kiddo, and get off this line!”

There was another burst of static as Jack hung up, yet Angel still had tears running down her face. The tiniest error in the code, and she had spoken to a man who thought her dead. Though, she hadn’t expected to start crying like that. She had wanted to yell, to scream. To hurt and kill. That was something new — the feeling of revenge. Angel didn’t like it. Hurting another human being so badly they beg for death is something Jack would do.

She would not become Jack.

A deep breath later, and the Siren dove back into the code, shifting some blocks around and making sure the line went to Sanctuary. The same crackle of static filled the speaker. It was three seconds of silence before Angel dared to speak.

“Hello? Is- is this Sanctuary?” She asked nervously.

“Yeah, you’ve got Scooter! What can I do for you today?”

Angel sighed. _Finally_. “Yes, uh. Can I speak to Lilith or one of the other Vault Hunters, please?”

Scooter laughed. “Girllll, where have you been? The Vault Hunters are on their way to Eridium Blight and Handsome Jack has Lil’th. Who’re you by the way?”

“I’m An- I’m Angel. I was wondering if you could give me the fast-travel code for Sanctuary.”

“Ha! You Hyperions is so stupid! Thinking you can get into this fine flying city by pretending to be a dead siren. Not a chance. Bye!” The line cut, sending the young Siren back to square one.

“Damnit. Come on, girl, lets take a break and then we can see about finding some shelter for the night.” Angel conceded.

The two found a slice of much-welcomed shade to sit and take a breather from the broiling sun. Two o’clock in the cycle and it looked like the sun had just made it past the horizon. Still, the heat was unbearable.

The sands of Pandora’s largest desert spanned hundreds of miles in all directions.  
To the East lay three horns divide, to the south, Hollow point. It wasn’t completely impossible for Angel to get there without dying. But even if she did, the dangerous bandit queen known as “Vallory” had her claws firmly sunk into that part of Pandora.  
She had connections everywhere. From Helios to the Edens.

Angel fiddled with the teal SMG she carried, taking the safety off, then on, then off again. She took a few sips of water and tossed a stick for Venus to catch. The skag brought it back a few times until it fell down a ravine.

There was nothing to do but wait for night to fall. The Siren would perish of heatstroke if she didn’t. So, with her skag pacing around Overlook, looking for food, she fell asleep.

The sun was slowly sinking behind the mountain ranges of the highlands when Angel woke up. Venus was knawing at a bone by her side. She had another splitting headache, and injected another dose of Eridium into her arm. The pain subsided within a minute. Bright sunlight filtered through the clouds and silhouetted the mountains. It turned the Dust into a shimmering sea of molten gold.

A cool breeze blew through her Angel’s jet black hair.  
She breathed in deeply, savouring the feeling of being free again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she had to set out again.

Even if the desert proved to be a heat dome in the day, the temperatures could be just as extreme at night. Spiderants had been known to freeze solid at night, leaving behind a puddle of water and gross insect bits in the morning. Venus had swallowed that animal bone whole, but seemed to be very excited about going off on another adventure. Angel bought another two rounds of SMG ammo from the Marcus Munitions vending machine and walked down to the valley that led to the Dust.

“Here we go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Angel has a flashback.
> 
> Very sorry again for the late update! School and work have kept me super busy. I’ll try to update every two weeks now, so look foreward to that!
> 
> Don’t forget to leave kudos and comments; they keep a writer motivated.  
> Thanks for reading!


	6. The Siren problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally updated this fic!  
> It's been months, and my good writing computer broke so I know I've been MIA for a while. Borderlands 3 has gotten me motivated enough to actually continue this story and I will continue to do so. School has been crazy, but I'm going to try updating when I can. 
> 
> Thank you to those who have been re-reading this story and I hope you enjoy this one!

The walls of the research chamber were white. So clean and void of blemish that it hurt to look at for long.   
Angel focused on her father and a couple other scientists through a glass window. 

“ Whatcha doin , dad?!” She called, knowing he could hear her through the speakers. 

“Just doing a  tinsy  check-up, cupcake.  We have to figure out how this power of yours works  then we can head home.” He replied, still looking at a computer screen. 

The young girl continued to peer through the plexiglass, trying to look at the screens and monitors.

“Angel, go sit and read or something, ok? I’ll be in there in a second.” John advised, looking up at her finally. Angel went back to the chair in the middle of the room and picked up the book, previously neglected beside her. 

It was rather boring. Vaults, bleh.    
Who would want to go looking for something that could possibly destroy them? The alien part seemed cool, though. She was a just wondering if anyone had seen one of these aliens, when her father and a doctor walked in. 

“Hi!” Angel greeted happily, once again dropping the book. 

“Sweetheart, I need you to stay in the chair for a couple more minutes.  Could you show this nice doctor lady what you did with the lights back home ?” John asked .

“But  _ daaad _ , you said to not show anyone my powers. ” She reasoned, slouching in her chair.

“Yes, but now is different.  If you do that, we can go get pretzels, huh? What’d you say?”

“Ok. Only the good ones, though.”

“Only  the good ones.” He echoed, stepping back into the observation room. 

The young Siren reached out with her mind into the fluorescent lights of the chamber, ignoring the lady frantically jotting down notes. The pale blue tattoos on her left arm lit up as she turned the lights all different colours. 

“Dad? I’m tired now, can we go home?” She asked, letting go of the lights  and shaking the slight pain out of her mind. 

“That’s not up to me, pumpkin. Ask the nice doctor.” Her father replied. 

Angel looked at the lady who was still writing like a maniac.

“Excuse me.” 

The doctor stopped her scribbling. “Yes?”

“Can I go home now? I’m really tired, and dad said I could go get a treat.” 

“No, not yet. You’re going to stay here for the night so we can observe. ”

Angel looked to the shining, white floor, a look of disappointment on her young face. “The whole night? ”

The girl had never stayed on Pandora for more than a day. The research lab down here was in the middle of nowhere, without any connection to the space station or home. Creatures and people here were dangerous and frightening, not to mention absolute lunatics. She didn’t want to stay here for the night, she didn’t want to stay here another hour. 

“The whole night. Have you ever heard of Sirens before?” The doctor asked. 

Angel watched her father back away into the control room with eyes like slits before replying. “Yes. I've seen videos and read things about them.” She didn’t take her eyes off the control room.

“Has your father told you that you’re a Siren, sweetheart?” 

“Yes.” The girl focused on the research computers in the room behind the doctor, the tattoos on her arm starting to radiate white light. “I want to go home. I’m sick of these tests.”

“You can’t go home.”

The lady in the room glanced at her arm, then the research room she was so intently staring at, eyes wide. 

“Sir? Your daughter is acting strange.” The lady call backing towards the door. 

John looked up from the computer and let the researcher in the room. “Angel stop it!” He yelled, panic in his voice. 

The lights and the computers began to flicker and spark. 

“You don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you?” 

The room went pitch black and Angel woke up in the old pipe she had set up camp in, sweat beading on her brow and breath heavy. 

“You don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you?” Those words had been hung over her head ever since her mother died. Jack had used them to dispel any attempts of rebellion. 

Venus was chewing on a piece of  spiderant  armour beside her, cracking the thick shell between her jaws. Angel reached out her hand, scratching its scaly head. The sun was a red sliver behind the grey mountains of the Highlands. She had been walking for hours, the sand had scraped up her feet badly, and her goal was miles away, floating in the sky.  Angel took a few deep breaths and calmed down, resigning for a few more hours. 

Five hours later, the sun was beginning to warm the desert. Venus ran around the sandy wastes, cowering from any trucks or other creatures that wanted to kill her. When she returned from her small expedition, Angel was still sound asleep in the empty pipe, so she went out hunting again.

 The  skag  found some of her own kind to run with for a bit, but eventually left them. A few hundred meters away drifted the smell of cooking meat. 

Venus followed the smell until she came to a small cabin with simple wooden walls, a smashed in window and a sheet metal roof. Another Catch-a-ride station was sitting beside it. 

She nudged the door in with her muzzle and found it empty, save for a  rakk  on a spit. The  skag  took it in her mouth and ran out, tripping over someone entering the shack. 

“What the? Hey, that was my food!” The  skag  shook off the sand that got in her face and continued running, the hooded man chasing her. 

Venus neared the pipe where Angel was taking tiny bites of another granola bar for breakfast and checking up on her  Eridium  situation. The Siren caught sight of her  skag  and carefully hopped down to greet it. 

“Hey girl, where did you go?”

Before she could get too close, a shot broke the silence of the desert and the  skag  tumbled forward and skidded to a stop in the gold sand, laying still. 

“Venus!” Angel cried, rushing forward and checking the wound. She was still alive, but unconscious. 

Skags have a thick skull for a reason. 

“Sorry, was that your  skag ?” A strangely familiar voice said, stepping closer to the girl. “Stupid thing stole my breakfast, probably isn’t dead though. Could you just pass me that  rakk ?” 

Angel looked up and fell back onto her hands. “Get away from me!” 

Timothy took a step back at the sudden screaming but stopped. “Why? Just give me the  rakk , kiddo.”

The siren’s instincts kicked in out of nowhere and she phase blasted the doppelganger back. Lawrence flew into the air and landed twenty feet away, face down in the sand.

Angel ran back to the pipe and grabbed the backpack, flinging around her shoulder as Venus slowly rose to her feet. “Come on, girl, we have to go!” 

The  skag  shook off the bullet and ran alongside the Siren, they ran southeast for ten minutes before the heat got to Angel and she had to stop to regain energy  and wipe the tears out of her eyes . 

Timothy woke up from the sand, spitting sand out of his mouth and trying to get it out of his hair. He fumbled on his belt for his  ECHOcomm  and called Helios. 

There was a burst of static as the line connected.

“Timmy! How’s everything going? You killed the Vault Hunters yet?” 

“Handsome Jack, sir? We have a fucking problem.”

Jack’s voice dropped  it’s  cheerful tone. 

“What kind of problem?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. Timmy has joined the fray and things are going to get very interesting.  
> Thanks for reading, leaving kudos and commenting!
> 
> \----------------------- 
> 
> Next chapter: Jack gets real pissed and Angel meets some "friends"


	7. Her Sanctuary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long waits, but here it is!  
> Will be inactive the last three weeks of July, as Cadet camp is mandatory and hopefully it'll be fun.  
> Enjoy!

“There’s another Siren on Pandora, and she just catapulted me into the sand.” Lawrence said, checking for broken bones and a bloody nose.  

“That’s just what I needed right now... Alright. What did she look like? Did she demonstrate any other powers apart from the phaseblast?”  

 

Angel cowered behind one of the tall, red sandstone spines sticking out of the sand. That couldn’t have been real, Handsome Jack wouldn’t be wandering around the desert in ragged clothes and a dark hood. But his double... Timothy Lawrence would do anything for Jack, even hide out in the Dust and wait for the Vault Hunters.  

Now, she had put a massive target on herself with nowhere to run.  

The doppelganger walked up to the empty tube, a small field blanket still lay crumpled there, stained with blood and half submerged in a pool of fresh Eridium.  

“Uh. Nearly black hair, half shaved and very messy,” he said, shuffling through the makeshift camp. “Really blue eyes, although I didn’t get a good look, they could’ve been silver or something.” 

   
“Were the tattoos familiar?” Jack asked, grasping for a confirmation of some sort.  

“Were the tattoos familiar? What kind of question is that, Jack? I haven’t memorized Siren tattoos, so no. They were not familiar. There is a half-eaten spiderant, a blanket and a pool of Eridium where she was sleeping.”  

There was a flurry of typing and heavy breathing on the other side of the connection as the President got every eye in the sky he could online.  

“Handsome Jack, sir? Are you still there?”  

“Yeah yeah, I’m here. But you are out there, and I’m gonna need you to run after that Siren and get her back here.” Jack said with a slight edge of desperation to his voice.  

“She sent me flying the last time I got close to her, who knows what she can do if she knows I’m coming?” Tim replied.  

“Then knock her out when she’s asleep!”  

 

\--------- 

 

Angel dragged her feet across the dunes towards the north of Pandora. Despite the sun’s low angle in the sky, the heat was getting to her. She kept the gun in hand and Venus, who looked as if she was never shot in the first place, caught her fall when she was about to collapse. 

 

“Thanks, skag.” She said heavily, taking a tiny sip from a canteen attached to the backpack.  

Every so often, the young Siren ducked behind one of the sandstones that stuck up from the ground and watched for anyone following her. Timothy wasn’t in sight yet, although she could bet that he’d called Jack.    
She pulled the grey and yellow hood over her head, and tied a portion of the torn outfit she wore as a mask.  

The grey sleeves covered the blue tattoos on her left arm, and the dark, purple-grey bruises on her right, from the Eridium injections.  

 

As the sun crept ever higher in the Pandoran sky, the heat became unbearable. Venus, being a skag, and more used to the desert environment, knew what to do.  

Angel followed the stone and sand coloured animal to an abandoned spiderant nest that some bandit had propped their car over as a shelter.   

The girl crawled under the car and dropped into the cool temperature of the den. The walls were slick with moisture, and there were still a few small carcasses in the far corner. It smelled like moldy wood, but it was better than the boiling sun. Venus stayed guard above, still in the shade but audibly panting.  

 

“Venus, come here, girl.” Angel called from the abandoned den as she was unpacking for the day.  

As the skag jumped down, the siren decided that they could recuperate there until nightfall. The young girl sat back against one of the rough walls and recoiled in pain. She didn’t notice the bright red burns that had bloomed across the back of her neck and her forearms. She had no cream or ointment to help with the radiating heat or pain, only eridium to blind her mind so it wouldn’t receive the signals. 

 No, she was addicted enough as it was. She would have to deal with it until it healed. Instead, the girl reached for a spiderant exoskeleton and tested the extent of her powers.  

The Siren placed her hand on the tough surface and focused on her palm. As she pressed her hand harder into the skeleton, her tattoos lit up bright white, casting shadows in the small cave. The organic material began to shift beneath her fingers.    
Startled by the sudden change in texture, Angel lost focus. The lights on her arm faded and a migraine festered in her head. From what she could see, the organic material had begun to tear itself apart, becoming translucent and viscous, almost like the effects of radiation over-exposure.  

“Should’ve experimented earlier. Would’ve been so much easier to escape if I could radiate anything.” 

 There was a brief picture in her mind of herself giving Handsome Jack radiation poisoning and his skin slowly melting away, but she shook it out.    
Deep within, she was still his daughter, though she promised herself long ago that she wouldn’t be the same.  

A sharp sound snapped her out of that thought. A gun cocking back and preparing to fire.  

Her muscles were aching and burning from the exertion, and her mind couldn’t handle the strain of any hacking, let alone a phaseblast. The teal SMG was a few feet away from her, dropped in the sand when she entered. Angel made a quick move to grab it, and her skag and retreat to the dark back corner of the cave. 

The dog-like creature snarled, mouth half open and exposing deadly rows of teeth.  

“Shh, stay.” Angel whispered, holding Venus back.    
A rope dropped through the entrance, and her day became much worse when Timothy dropped down. 

He hadn’t spotted her yet. That was good, but, despite the darkness, she could see the intact ECHO on his hip.    
That wasn’t as good. 

Angel covered her tattooed arm with the opaque jacket and hacked into it, frying the microchip and severing any links to Hyperion. Unfortunately, the jacket was lighter than she previously thought, and the white light still shone through the room.  

Lawrence snapped his head towards the bright light, gun raised, and brought it down on the side of her head, knocking her out cold. 

 

When she woke, her hands were firmly tied behind her back with thick zip-ties and the doppelganger was trying to get his ECHO online. 

“I fried the microchip the moment you set foot down here...no way you’ll be talking to anyone on that.” Angel said, a sharp edge to her usually gentle voice.    
Tim looked slightly frightened at first, but assumed his ‘Jack’ face quickly.  

“Quiet, Siren. I’ll find another, then you’re going back to Helios.”   
Those words sent a shiver down her spine. Anywhere was better than that room near the loader bay. Every day for years, she could hear people walk by the doors, oblivious to the torture within.  

“And you’d go back to being Jack’s shield. How many assassins have you taken the bullet from, Timothy?” She questioned, knowing his vulnerability without Handsome Jack.  Lawrence digi-structed a gun from the holster on his thigh and shot towards the stunned skag on the other side of the room. The bullets hit the packed sand on the ground, fizzing with electricity.  

“Do as I say, and no one dies!”  

Angel shriveled at the yell, too many semblances of her father and the memories he created.  

“Now, we’ll stay here for the day and move at night. Don’t try anything supernatural, ok? Are you listening to me?” Tim asked, looking over his supplies.  

“Yes.” Angel replied, a thousand-yard stare in her eyes as she thought.  

The young Siren spent a lot of time thinking.    
Thinking was the only escape from Hyperion’s eye. They’d monitor everything she did over the ECHOnet, anything she hacked or talked to, they could see.  

Not in her mind though. No. That was her sanctuary.  

She thought about where they were going. Lawrence wouldn’t be able to get a secure connection to Hyperion with any bandit ECHO. No, he’d have to get a clean one.    
_Let’s see._ Angel thought.  _What towns are closest that could have a good connection? There’s the old Dahl Abandon, but that’s crawling with Bandits, or there’s..._  

Hollow Point.  

She probably would’ve ended up there anyway, but this gave her an opportunity.  

Before Jack had his “Vault accident”, she found all the Vault Hunters to go inside the moon. Aurelia, Nisha, Wilhelm, Claptrap, Timothy and Athena.  
Last she checked up on them, Wilhelm and Nisha were dead, Aurelia; off-world, Claptrap in Sanctuary, Tim with her, and Athena in Hollow Point with hergirlfriend.  

It was more likely those two would help a sick, young Siren than a Jack lookalike.  

That was her plan, all she could do was pray it would work.  

Things could get very messy, very fast if it didn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's that.   
> Hope y'all liked the chapter!
> 
> -Next Chapter-  
> Angel and Timothy have a grand old adventure without any yelling or violence and everyone lives happily ever after. lol


End file.
